Visual Anthropology

n the Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford, there is a set of four photographs taken in anthropometric style of //Kabbo, a /Xam Bushman from the Strontberg dis-

trict of the northern Cape, who in the early 1870s was the principal contributor to the archive of Bushman ethnology compiled by Dr W.H.I. Bleek and Lucy Lloyd (PRM B11/3 a–d: Figure 1a). The photographs show //Kabbo in full- face and profile, both full-length and head-and-shoulders. The set is one of ten sets of photographs in the Pitt Rivers Museum taken in the same style and apparently at the same time. Five sets depict /Xam Bushmen and five various other racial types in South Africa. The four other Bushmen subjects are identified as !Gubbu (of whom there are actually six photographs: Figure 1b), //Kabathin, Yarrisho and /Hankum. The photographs of //Kabbo and /Hankum are annotated with details of their measure- ments around the chest and between the tips of the fingers, as well as their height. The photographs appear to have entered the Pitt Rivers Museum from the collection of H.N. Moseley, Professor of Human Anatomy at Oxford, who is likely to have acquired them in December 1873 at the time of his visit to Bleek’s house near Cape Town, during his voyage around the world (Moseley 1879:148; Edwards 1995 personal communication). Copies of nine of the ten sets of photographs are in the Ethnological Album (SAL Album 186) that Bleek sent to Sir George Grey in 1872, and which has recently been returned from Auckland. And versions of the head-and-shoulders studies are represented in a second Ethnological Album (SAL Album 167), confusingly inscribed ‘Gray Library’ (sic), that Bleek put together for the South African Library (for this album, see Schoeman 1992). Neither of these albums, nor, apparently, any other collection in Cape Town, con-

tains a complete set of the four photographs of //Kabbo. In this paper I want to show, firstly, how this extraordin- ary collection of dehumanising photographs came to be made, and then how, under exceptional circumstances, the image of //Kabbo himself was transformed into a more humane portrait as his remarkable qualities became known to the Europeans who represented him.

The story of how the anthropometric photographs came to be made can be pieced together from fragments surviving in the Bleek and Lloyd archive at the Jagger Library, University of Cape Town, the Grey papers at the South African Library, and the Colonial Office and Government House papers in the State Archives in Cape Town. On 30 November 1869, Lord Granville, the Secretary of State for the Colonies, addressed a circular letter from Downing Street to all colonial governments, including the officer administering the government of the Cape of Good Hope, to request assistance in making a col- lection of photographs “having much Ethnological value as illustrating the peculiarities of the various Races within the British Possessions” (BC 151 D1.12.1). To his circular, Granville attached a letter from Thomas Huxley, president of the Ethnological Society, which explained how the pro- ject would be established on a scientific basis:

in order that any information on the subject may be furnished in the most available form for scientific comparison, I invite your attention to the suggestions contained in the enclosed Letter, illustrated by the accompanying Photographs, and which will explain to you fully the nature of the information which it would be useful to obtain.

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Images of //Kabbo

Michael Godby

I

Rosina, a young woman from the Transvaal, aged 19, photographed in Cape Town by Lawrence and Selkirk. Rosina was cap- tured as a baby in the war of 1853, in which she lost her family. PRM

B11/1a-g and SAL INIL 14129 Album 167

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Unfortunately, the version of Huxley’s letter that was sent to the Cape appears not to have survived: presum- ably it was given to the photographer who was chosen for the project and not returned. But Huxley’s directions can be reconstructed from the draft he wrote at Lord Granville’s request on 12 August 1869 that is preserved amongst his papers in the Imperial College archive (Huxley Papers [1869] 30:75–8). The fact that Granville’s covering letter is preserved amongst the Bleek papers shows that the Governor of the Cape at the time did indeed pass on official documents to persons who would implement them and that, sooner or later, Wilhelm Bleek himself was involved in the project to photograph the ‘various Races’ of South Africa.

In the letter of 30 December 1871 that Sir Henry Barkly, Governor of the Cape Colony, wrote to accom pany the photographs on their despatch to London, he stated that, on his arrival at the Cape in the second half of 1870, he found that “no steps had been taken to comply with the request for Photographs” (SA GH 23/31.155). The first dated communication connected with the project amongst the Bleek papers is a draft of a letter dated 5 February 1871, in which Bleek referred to his enclosure of photographs by Messrs Lawrence and Selkirk of the two Bushmen, //Kabbo and !Gubbu (BC 151 D1.12.4; for Lawrence & Selkirk, see Bull & Denfield 1970:203–5, 209–10). The apologetic tone of the letter suggests that the photographs had been taken only recently. For exam- ple, Bleek explained that //Kabbo is shown facing right, rather than left as Huxley’s instructions required, on account of a large swelling on his left shoulder. (Incidentally, this document may serve as an object-les- son in caution because, while later drafts and letters invariably attribute this swelling to a blow from a knobkerrie, only this draft prevents the entirely reason- able inference that //Kabbo was wounded either at the time of his arrest or during the recent Koranna War by stating that the knobkerrie belonged to his wife.) The letter also apologised for the fact that “the heads are not as large as they ought to be, and are not sufficiently restricted to the head”. Bleek then compared the photographs unfavourably with a profile portrait of a Bushman taken by S.B. Barnard (for Barnard, see Bull & Denfield 1970:186–7); and he expressed the determination that, if Mr Southey, the Colonial Secretary at the Cape, should agree to it, he would “try and get a still better specimen photograph of a native”, because he had “no doubt that next time Messrs Lawrence and Selkirk will succeed better”.

This letter confirms that the project was proceeding, at least in the manufacture of a specimen photograph for others to copy, by early February 1871. But the real sig- nificance of the date of Bleek’s draft is that it precedes, if by only a few days, the date of 16 February 1871 when //Kabbo was transferred from the Breakwater Prison to Dr Bleek’s house in Mowbray to assist him in his study

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Figure 1a Four photographs of //Kabbo by Lawrence and Selkirk, Cape Town, 1870–1. PRM B11/3a–j

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These Notes refer to the expansion of his original collec- tion of four sets of photographs in three developments. First, such representatives of ‘other Races’ as were detained in the Breakwater Prison who could be com- pelled to submit to the process of being photographed in conformity with Huxley’s instructions were included in the collection: in the event these amounted to only to three Bantu and two Khoi and Bleek expressed regret both that no other nations were “within our reach”, as he put it, and that the absence of women and children ren- dered the collection incomplete for anthropological pur- poses. Second, as a “private undertaking not ordered by government” (BC 151 D1.12.2), Bleek had Lawrence and Selkirk make group portraits of Bushmen and others at the Breakwater. He enlisted the help of their chaplain, the Revd G.H.R. Fisk, to describe their “mental and bodily characteristics”: Fisk’s descriptions are preserved in the Bleek and Lloyd archive (BC 151 E4.6.10). In his Notes, Bleek invited his reader to refer between the Bushman group (Figure 2) and two of the sets in Huxley’s style: “In this way, a standard of measurement is supplied to the

Group, of which several other members stand in some relationship to one or another of the Bushmen individually photographed.” One of the two Bushmen thus singled out was !Gubbu “whose photograph was used as a sample enclosed in the circular” (and who was described by Revd Fisk as “dull”). And the other was /Hankum whose set of photographs constitute the third development of Bleek’s original involvement in the project and the fifth in Huxley’s style. It is clear from the Notes that /Hankum was photographed at the direction of Sir Henry Barkly, to whom Bleek attributes the idea of supplying a few mea- surements even though they “had not been mentioned in Professor Huxley’s circular letter, and so had not been taken at first”. !Gubbu, //Kabathin and Yarrisho had gone home before they could be measured, leaving only //Kabbo to perform this service and, seemingly, to provide some substance to what must have appeared as a very imperfect report. /Hankum was both photographed and measured shortly before he too returned to the northern Cape. The different position of the tape measure in /Hankum’s head-and-shoulders images tends to confirm

of the Bushman language (Bleek & Lloyd 1911:x–xi; Deacon 1994b:19–21). In these photographs, therefore, //Kabbo and !Gubbu were still prisoners at the Breakwater. This fact, which is confirmed by the tiled floor and other details of the setting which reappear in photographs that were certainly taken at the Breakwater, surely explains why the subjects submitted to the humi - liating process of being photographed in this way. But while !Gubbu remained a prisoner and never contributed to the ethnological archive, //Kabbo served the last part of his sentence as a house-guest in Mowbray, and chose to remain there afterwards to continue working with Bleek and his sister-in-law, Lucy Lloyd. In the period before his return to the northern Cape on 15 October 1873, //Kabbo seems to have earned the respect and affection of his European colleagues and, in the process, demanded an entirely new image.

When, eventually, on 30 December 1871, Sir Henry Barkly sent the photographs from Government House to the Earl of Kimberley, the new Secretary of State for the Colonies in London, he referred to “Some misapprehen- sion . . . which occasioned delay” in carrying out his directions; and the copy of this letter that remained in Cape Town refers in the margin to the enclosure, inter alia, of “Replies of Civil Commissioners”. It appears, therefore, that at some stage commissioners in the colony were asked to supply photographs for the project and that, for whatever reasons, they were unable to comply. An undated and unaddressed draft of a letter amongst the Bleek papers confirms that Bleek did, indeed, provide the model for the commissioners in citing no less than 20 copies of the four different views of the Bushman whom internal evidence allows to be identified as !Gubbu (BC 151 D1.12.3): clearly Bleek had obtained serviceable speci- men photographs in a second session with this man. The draft letter also refers to four views of three other Bushmen. Reference to a separate, undated list of names and convict numbers of four Bushmen photographed by Lawrence and Selkirk for Her Majesty’s Government allows the three other Bushmen to be identified as //Kabbo, //Kabathin and Yarrisho (BC 151 D1.12.9). However, it would seem that, unlike !Gubbu, //Kabbo was not rephotographed on this occasion because only one set of photographs of him is known.

At the time of the undated draft, therefore, it would seem that Bleek was involved in the photographic project to the extent of providing photographs of Bushmen of whom he “thought it advisable to photograph several . . . as the race is dying out”; and in the creation of the model for the photographs of other races to be organised by the civil commissioners. However, presumably as a result of the failure of the commissioners to obtain photographs in Huxley’s style, at some point before 23 December 1871 when he wrote his Notes to Accompany the Photographs (Bleek & Lloyd 1911:434–9), Bleek was obliged by Sir Henry Barkly to take responsibility for the entire project.

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Figure 1b Six photographs of !Gubbu by Lawrence and Selkirk, Cape Town, 1870–1. PRM B11/3a–j

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and ethnologists of the time welcomed any scientific application of the camera to the study of the human body (see also Lamprey 1869; and, on Lamprey, Spencer 1992). As Edward B. Tylor wrote in his review of Gustav Fritsch’s Die Eingeborenen Sud-Afrika’s (1872), “The closer appreciation of race-types, which is now supplanting the vaguer generalities of twenty years ago, is in no small measure due to the introduction of photographic por- traits” (Tylor 1874:479); and Tylor, amongst others, could look forward to the day when, with the aid of photogra- phy, it might be possible to calculate scientifically “the constitution of a race, on Quetelet’s principle of a central type with gradually decreasing variants” (Tylor 1876:184–5). Huxley’s system was designed to facilitate the craze for measuring different parts of the human anatomy, especially the skull, that went under the names of anthropometry, osteometry, somatology, craniology and cephalometry (Spencer 1992). In this climate, Tylor could report with approval Fritsch’s claim to have discovered the average proportions of the Bushman skull and its relationship to the skull of the people then identified as ‘Hottentot’. Such “elaborate anatomical data”, suggested Tylor, “may afford the means of more fully working out the ethnological problems of the South African races” (Tylor 1874).

Needless to say, Wilhelm Bleek’s own method was to use comparison in his study of different aspects of the cul- ture of the several South African races. When he shelved his Comparative Grammar of South African Languages, he moved from his original discipline of linguistics to a more comprehensive approach to culture—but he clearly intended to retain the comparative method. His Notes to Accompany the Photographs sent to London in December 1871 compare, albeit summarily, the three native race types of South Africa in the anthropological terms of agricultural practices, marriage partnerships, social organisation and chieftainship, religion, literature and culture, counting systems, and language type. (Some of this information, of course, is greatly expanded in Bleek’s other publications and his Reports to the House of Assembly in Cape Town.) Bleek’s research allowed him to correct the crude early view of Huxley himself, that was still accepted by Tylor in 1874, that the race they all called ‘Hottentot’ was the result of crossing between the Bushman and Negroid peoples:

It is possible that the Bushmen and Hottentots were originally one race, and that their languages are of common descent; but in any case they must have had a separate existence for many thousands of years; and until their relationship has been proved (which is not yet the case) it will be most in accordance with scientific principles to consider them as distinct races, with languages which have no traceable relationship with each other (Bleek & Lloyd 1911:435).

Thus, although in the anthropology of the period the comparative method appears to have assumed a generally static image of racial types, it was clearly capable of very great subtlety and it was not, in the event, incompatible with the essentially dynamic theory of evolution that Darwin promulgated in On the Origin of Species (1859). Huxley himself was one of Darwin’s principal champions, arguing as early as 1863 that “no absolute structural line of demarcation” separated the animal world from humankind in either physical or psychical terms (Vanderpool 1973:188; see also Di Gregorio 1984). The evolutionists’ conviction that even intellectual and aes- thetic faculties owed their development to natural selec- tion afforded a completely new view of the mental capaci- ty of Bushmen and other so-called primitives in relation to civilised people. As Huxley put it in Mr Darwin’s Critics (1871): “In complexity and difficulty, I would say that the intellectual labour of a ‘good hunter or warrior’ considerably exceeds that of an ordinary Englishman” (Vanderpool 1973:181–6). Moreover, from the dispute at this time between the Anthropological Society under James Hunt and Huxley’s Ethnological Society, it is clear that the Darwinians rejected racism as unacceptable on both scientific and political grounds (Stocking 1987:248–52).

Wilhelm Bleek’s identification with Darwinian theory is apparent in the title of the work he published shortly before he began his intensive study of Bushman ethnology: On the Origin of Language: Linguistics and Evolutionary Theory (Bleek 1869; see also Spohr 1962:30). But his commitment to the understanding of the fundamental humanity of all races, which was one of the most revolu- tionary aspects of Darwin’s theory, is evident in the entire ethnological archive. Thus, when Bleek referred, as he often did in one way or another, to the comparatively low state of Bushman civilisation in relation to, say, the Bantu- speaking peoples of the region (for example, in a letter dated February 1875 to Charles Brownlee, Secretary for Native Affairs: BC 151 D1.14.1), this term should be taken

that these photographs were taken on a separate, undoubtedly later, occasion than the four other sets.

Bleek’s Notes to Accompany the Photographs reveal an obvious interest in the anthropological purpose of Lord Granville’s project. And on several occasions he involved himself in what might appear to have been the distasteful task of collecting the photographic evidence for it. Although only fragmentary, his surviving correspondence shows him to have been involved in the stages, first of having //Kabbo and !Gubbu photographed in an improved style, based on the example of yet more pho- tographs that were taken for him by S.B. Barnard. Then, probably on at least two separate occasions, he had /Hankum and the five prisoners of other races photo- graphed in the same style. Moreover, on his own initia- tive, Bleek had several group photographs posed in the compound of the Breakwater prison in such a way as to invite inspection of the subjects primarily as physical beings (Figure 3). He also complied with the Governor’s suggestion that measurements be taken of the subjects that were still available. However, it is not really possible to deduce Bleek’s attitude to his Bushmen subjects from this evidence without first exploring Thomas Huxley’s instructions in the context of anthropological theory at that time.

The directions for photographs that Huxley devised at Granville’s instigation and which, under Bleek’s supervision, were used by Lawrence and Selkirk at the Breakwater, were designed to ensure that photographs of ethnological subjects provided information respecting the proportions and conformation of the human body that was both measurable and comparable (Huxley Papers [1869] 30:75–8; Edwards 1990; Spencer 1992). The subject was to be photographed naked in the four established anthropometric poses, with a plainly marked measuring scale placed in the same plane. For the full-length, full- face portrait, the subject was required to stand with heels together, the right arm outstretched horizontally, and the palm of the hand turned towards the camera. In the pro- file view, the subject should be turned to the left, the arm bent at the elbow so that it would not obscure the con- tours of the body, and the back of the hand turned towards the camera. Contrary to what is generally assumed (for example, by Edwards 1990; Spencer 1992), it may be that Huxley’s participation in the photographic project was limited to supplying these rules, for, when Lord Kimberley wrote on 16 May 1872 to thank Barkly for sending the Breakwater photographs, he indicated that just two sets had been forwarded to Huxley and the remainder had been added to the collection in his depart- ment (SA GH 1/336:116–17). On the other hand, the Colonial Office is not known to have sponsored any other anthropological research at this time (Stocking 1987:266).

Although recent scholarship has doubted that Huxley’s system could ever provide measurements of the necessary accuracy (Spencer 1992), many anthropologists

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Figure 2 Ten Bushman prisoners at the Breakwater Prison pho- tographed by Lawrence and Selkirk, Cape Town, 1871. UCT BC151 D1.12.10

The Lion Star The lion walks, he stands, his name is ‘ star' (or 'makes the star') he (the other man) fears the lion, he, (the lion) makes the star as? on which? he stands he is the man, for? he is the lion, he is the lion, he makes the star, he in future becomes a star. He fears the lion he becomes a star because the girl looked at him as he came along He becomes a star as he comes along, he stands, he becomes a star he henceforeward (in the future)(altogether) becomes a star he fears the person, he fears the lion who is a person he stands because he wants to be a person he henceforward stands, he becomes a star as he stands he later returns to his home, he henceforward stands, he stands fast; also the other lion, the two, they both become stars they walk, they henceforward both are stars, they henceforward go and stand, they henceforward both become stars, as they stand for they are two lions they become stars they do not go to their wives for they quite fast stand, they first go, they stand the women sit, the men stand the men henceforward stand, they do not talk. The women sit, they do not talk, they are silent, the men are silent.

—Told to Lucy Lloyd by //Kabbo in May 1871 (UCT BC151 II–I:237–40)

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his preparedness to co-operate with the demands of the new Governor. In any event, Bleek must have known that the project was only possible in the dehumanising envi- ronment of a prison; and there is evidence that, as Bleek got to know individual Bushmen in the context of his own home, he developed a sympathy for them that would have precluded such treatment.

The first Bushman to stay in the Bleek household in Mowbray was the 18-year-old /A!Kunta, who had been arrested with //Kabbo and convicted to two years imprisonment at the Breakwater in October 1869 (Bleek & Lloyd 1911:x; Deacon 1994b:19). /A!Kunta was selected by the prison chaplain, G.H.R. Fisk, in response to Bleek’s petition to Sir Henry Barkly in August 1870. But, although he stayed at Mowbray until October 1873, that is about two years beyond the end of his prison sentence, his contribution to the ethnological project was considered to be of limited value because, on the one hand, his isolation from his companions was thought to compromise his use of language and, on the other, his knowledge of folklore was limited on account of his youth: in the event, /A!Kunta contributed only two stories to the archive. Bleek sent photographs of “the younger one of the two Bushmen who is with us”, along with one of his daughter and himself, to Sir George Grey on 9 October 1871 (SAL MSB 223,1.19A:15). These images are certainly identifiable with the cartes de visite by S.B. Barnard preserved in the Grey Album (SAL ALBX 19, INIL 15631–2), of which there are versions in the Ethnological Album (SAL Album 167, INIL 14141–2). It is likely that the profile view (Figure 3) was the Barnard photograph referred to in the draft letter of 6 February 1871 as the model used to develop a good specimen picture of !Gubbu, even though it may have been made before Bleek had seen Huxley’s instructions (Bleek & Lloyd 1911:437–8). In any event, this photograph combines an obvious ethnographic purpose with a mea- sure of concern for the personality of the sitter.

To make up for /A!Kunta’s deficiencies as a research source, Bleek applied for and received permission for a second Bushman prisoner to join him at Mowbray (Bleek 1873a; 1875). On 16 February 1871 //Kabbo joined the Bleek household and remained until he left for the northern Cape with /A!Kunta on 15 October 1873. In this period, working with Bleek and, increas- ingly, with Lloyd, //Kabbo both taught his hosts the /Xam Bushman language and contributed the major part of the folklore archive. All parties were convinced of the impending extinction of the Bushmen people and it would seem that the shared sense of urgency threw the collaborators into an unusually close relationship. There was, of course, no question of friendship on equal terms, but during the period of //Kabbo’s stay, Bleek described him in official documents as “most intelli- gent” and “an excellent narrator” and, in his Report Concerning his Researches into the Bushman Language and Customs, he referred to //Kabbo as “our elder

Bushman” (Bleek 1873a:5). The familiarity and respect that these descriptions imply are reflected in Bleek’s evident concern for //Kabbo’s well-being on his return to the northern Cape. //Kabbo and /A!Kunta were sent by train to Victoria West and they made their own way home “to their possessions” from there. Bleek’s Second Report Concerning Bushman Researches indicates that the Mowbray household followed their progress in returning home and finding their wives in a series of communica- tions with officials in the area (Bleek 1875). After Bleek died in 1875, Lucy Lloyd tried to make contact with //Kabbo (but not with /A!Kunta) in the hopes that he would return to continue his work with the archive as he had promised, only to learn from a Mr Devenish of Vanwyksvlei that //Kabbo had died on 25 January 1876 (Lloyd 1889:1). In her account of this attempt, Lloyd referred to //Kabbo as “Dr Bleek’s former Bushman teacher”.

From two Memorials Received at the Colonial Office in Cape Town, in which Bleek gave some account of the expenses incurred in having /A!Kunta and //Kabbo stay with him, it is possible to gain a little insight into how the Mowbray household operated. In the first submission of 27 March 1872, Bleek claimed one shilling and sixpence a day for the upkeep of each Bushman and reported, by the way, that, because of his position at the Grey Library, and because he was not particularly strong, he could give no more than an hour in the

in its literal sense and should not be understood to denote any lack in intellectual ability—or, indeed, potential—of Bushmen. On the contrary, in a letter to Sir George Grey of October 1871, Bleek wrote that Bushmen were “the most interesting nation in South Africa, at all events they are the most surprising one” (SAL MSB 223,1.19A:15). Moreover, even in the summary Notes to Accompany the Photographs, Bleek described Bushmen as “poetical in their ideas, with an extensive mythological traditionary litera- ture”; and he attached elaborate genealogical tables of the Bushmen who were photographed, specifically to refute the “many erroneous ideas entertained regarding this nation, and its social relations, or rather its alleged want of regular social relations”. Bleek’s evident respect for many aspects of Bushman culture may be contrasted with the caricatural image to be found in a contemporary report of a traveller through //Kabbo’s home country in the Cape Monthly Magazine a supposedly liberal publica- tion (E.J.D. 1873).

Over and above the problems of reification and ‘othering’ that are involved in any scientific examination of the human body (Davison 1993), it is perhaps more shocking to the modern sensibility to see a photograph in Huxley’s objectifying, anthropometric style when the sub- ject is known rather than anonymous, and more shocking still when the subject is a person like //Kabbo. //Kabbo’s wisdom and generosity shine through the Bleek and Lloyd archive and his humanity has been celebrated recently in the work of Pippa Skotnes, John Samson and Stephen Watson.

Unfortunately, Bleek’s review of the comparable project, Dr Fritsch’s Natives of South Africa (Bleek 1873b), while confirming that the exact identity of the different race groups in South Africa was indeed a major topic in con- temporary ethnology, reveals little of his attitude to the practice of ethnological photography in general. But Bleek must have been conscious of the invasive character of Huxley’s particular version of this photography and aware of resistance to it, if not at first hand, then at least through the negative reports of the commissioners: else- where in the Empire, the project was resisted, both by the intended subjects and by certain colonial administrators who feared it might jeopardise their own efforts to intro- duce ‘civilisation’, in part through the medium of clothing (Edwards 1990:247–9). It is possible that Bleek agreed to participate in the project out of respect for the name of Thomas Huxley. Although Huxley was committed to the zoological, rather than philological approach to ethnology (Di Gregorio 1984:160–2), his respect for Bleek’s work is apparent in his joining Darwin and others to write a memorial in support of Sir George Grey’s application to secure a British civil pension for Bleek (Spohr 1962:31–2). Moreover, Bleek might even have met Huxley when he was in London in 1869, at the precise time that the photo- graphic project was being formulated. Alternatively, Bleek might have felt that his future research depended upon

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Figure 3 Carte de visite of /A!Kunta by S.B. Barnard, Cape Town, 1871. SAL ALBX 19, INIL 15632

Stars Told to Lucy Lloyd by !Nanni in 1881 (UCT BC151 L XI&XII:9869–71)

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the household because, on the one hand, they were not very strong and, on the other, “It was also found necessary to keep the Bushmen tolerably fresh for the hours (some- times four in the day) in which they taught us their lan- guage.”

On 14 May 1872, that is, at about the same time as these submissions, Bleek made up a set of the photographs taken in Huxley’s style and the four groups that he himself had initiated and presented it under the title of “South African Ethnology” to his patron, Sir George Grey, for his birthday (SAL MSB 223,1.19A:15; and Ethnological Album 186, INIL 24107–46). The collection is identical to that sent to London the previous year, except that no photographs of //Kabbo are included. Because of the many moves this collection has made—to London, Auckland and back to Cape Town—it cannot be certain that this omission represents a purposeful act of exclusion. It is tempting, nonetheless, to interpret it as Bleek removing the images of humiliation of a man he had come to respect. If this is the case, then this simple act of suppression may be seen as the first step in the creation of a more humane image of //Kabbo and his family.

The image of //Kabbo that Bleek selected for the Ethnological Album that he made especially for the Grey Library in Cape Town was a version of the original full- face ethnological study, but screened within an oval format (SAL Ethnological Album 167, INIL 14138: Figure 4): given the fact that Bleek did not send a photograph of //Kabbo to George Grey in October 1871 when he sent one of /A!Kunta, it is likely that there was no other image at that time. Because it was the practice of Lawrence and Selkirk, as with other professional photographers of the time, to retain their negatives and make prints on request, it is not possible to date these oval images with accuracy. The superimposition of the frame brings the image close to the conventions of photographic portraiture, both by softening the scientific linearity of the original and, most obviously, by masking the measuring instruments. Again, this treat- ment seems to have been reserved for //Kabbo alone amongst the ten people photographed in Huxley’s style.

Although it is possible to discern an ethnological inter- est in some photographs taken of Bushmen people staying at Mowbray, even long after //Kabbo and Bleek had died (see, for example, the Hermann Album at the South African Library), images of //Kabbo and his family in the 1870s move perceptibly towards the conventions of European portraiture. Thus Bleek’s daughter, Dorothea, wrote in 1909 of W. Hermann’s photograph of //Kabbo’s nephew, Diä!kwain, who stayed in the household between 29 November 1873 and 18 March 1874 and again, at the end of his sentence for murder, between 13 June 1874 and 7 March 1876 (Figure 5):

There stands before me an old photo of a Bushman. It is David, or Daud, as the Dutch called him. He is look- ing down with a happy smile at his best hand, which

he holds gingerly, in order to display a brass ring on one finger. His best tie and suit have come out very well too. He holds his flute in his right hand. (Deacon 1994b:9)

The condescending tone of this memoir should not obscure the fact that, in absolute contrast to the ethno- graphic photographs, the photograph of Diä!kwain shows the subject actively presenting himself to the camera. And the passage also confirms not only that //Kabbo’s relatives were treated with interest and affection in the Bleek house- hold in the mid 1870s, but also that their image was understood to be able to recreate personality and, even, narrative. Dorothea Bleek’s mention of the photograph standing before her, moreover, suggests that it may have been an independent image, rather than part of an album, and therefore considered capable of sustaining a relatively complex meaning.

At some stage, the image of //Kabbo himself tran- scended the perceived limits of photography and found

evening to the direct study of the language from the mouths of the Bushmen and that, in consequence, most of the work in both language and folklore was being done by Lucy Lloyd (SA CO 4172 B32). In the Supplement to this submission dated 9 April 1872, Bleek sought to sub- stantiate the amount of money he had claimed (SA CO 4172 B42). Bleek mentioned the need for warm winter clothing and the expenses for nursing when the Bushmen became ill. Bleek further justified the claim for 1s. 6d. a day:

It was also necessary to make them fairly comfortable, so that they should be less anxious to return to their own country and friends; and we were obliged to keep them particularly clean and tidy, as they had to be for hours in the sitting room, when giving us instruction in their language.

Bleek claimed, moreover, that it was not possible to recover this expenditure by having the Bushmen work for

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Figure 4 Photograph of //Kabbo by Lawrence and Selkirk, Cape Town, 1870–1, screened in an oval frame. SAL Ethnology Album 167, INIL 14138

Figure 5 Photograph of Diä!kwain by W. Hermann, Cape Town, 1873–6, reproduced in Bleek & Lloyd 1911:5. SAM neg. no 671

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expression in the medium of art (Figure 6). The image survives in the chromolithograph that served as the frontispiece of Specimens of Bushman Folklore (Bleek & Lloyd 1911), but this is a reproduction of an earlier painting by William Schroeder (1852–92). This image is clearly designed as a portrait in the European tradition of afford- ing dignity and status to the sitter. The original image can be dated before February 1876, for it is certainly the “coloured portrait” that appears in an extraordinary list of objects that was sent to an unknown destination “to accom- pany Dr Bleek’s Second Report Concerning Bushman Researches” at that time (BC 151 D1.12.5). The reference on the list and its several drafts to packages of //Kabbo’s and others’ hair points to the same invasive methods of con- temporary anthropology as the ethnological photographs themselves: in fact, the two are likely to be connected because, if the subjects’ heads had not been shaved for the photographs so as to exhibit the cranial structure, they would have been shaved as a matter of course in the prison environment that had made the photographs possible. But the idea that useful information about an ethnological subject could be communicated in a “coloured portrait” suggests a totally new relationship between observer and observed. It is not possible to attribute with any certainty the inclusion of either item on the list to Wilhelm Bleek himself, because he died in August 1875. But Bleek certainly knew Schroeder, who contributed drawings of Kreli, Botman and others to his Ethnological Album (SAL Album 167). Moreover, soon after Bleek’s death, Schroeder donated a commemorative portrait to the South African Library for the reason that “The Doctor has shown me much kindness” (SAL INIL 6575). Incidentally, this drawing is evidence in itself of the relative status of art and photography at that time, in that it was clearly considered an improvement on the S.B. Barnard photograph on which it was based. It is not possible to prove that Schroeder’s portrait of //Kabbo was done from life, that is before 15 October 1873 when //Kabbo left Mowbray. But there is certainly no photograph surviving that could have served as a model; and in both costume and expression the portrait seems convincingly life-like. Schroeder’s watercolour portrait of //Kabbo’s son-in-law, /Han≠kass’o, which was also reproduced in Specimens of Bushman Folklore, is pre- served in the Bleek and Lloyd archive (BC 151 G1.2). This drawing cannot be dated before 1878, when /Han≠kass’o began his two-year stay in Mowbray (Bleek & Lloyd 1911:xi; Deacon 1994b:21–3), but this date is not binding for the portrait of //Kabbo. However, it is not necessary to demonstrate that Schroeder’s painting was made directly to Bleek’s instruction because it surely reflects, as best its rather feeble style permits, the extraordinary humanity of Bleek’s last great project. The image of //Kabbo that is restored in this portrait, with his hair grown back to its natural length, an ear-ring that is not present in the ethnological pho- tographs, and the great coat reflecting Bleek’s concern for his welfare, is one of quiet assurance in his full human dignity.

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Figure 6 //Kabbo in a chromolithograph by Andre & Sleigh after a coloured portrait by William Schroeder. The portrait is the frontispiece to Bleek & Lloyd (1911).

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he way non-bushmen have imagined ‘bush- men’ has changed several times. Noble, bestial, vanishing, autochthonous, stone-age, little,

impoverished: each attributed quality touched the fate of real peoples, in large and small ways. Not only did words and images affect imperial and settler poli- cies, but they also helped determine which diverse groupings of people were visualised as ‘bushmen’ (Wilmsen 1989). Being a ‘bushman’ was, among other things, a mode of expression about disempowered peo- ple. As Coetzee (1988) and Pratt (1992) have shown, the necessities of imperial and settler policies plotted the general directions of such imaginings, just as they were shaped by them.

The discursive construction of bushmen, and the material interests of their observers, thus correspond- ed to each other: however, they did not make a closed system. Art is never closed. Speaking and picturing draw on a universe of potentiality, and beneath each dominant pattern are contrasting ones. The question is why some images persist in people’s minds and actions, while others are ignored.

A critical, and surprisingly unexamined, dimension to the imaging of southern African bushmen1 is their actual picturing. Toward the end of the nineteenth century, and alongside various consumer trends of the Victorian imperium, photography began to affect Europeans’ idea of Africans. Intersecting with ‘exhibi- tions’, travelling shows, and museum displays, photog-

raphy let great numbers of Western, urban people ‘see’ Africans living in far away, ‘natural’ habitats.

2

Previously, only travellers or academics could advance apparently well-informed opinions about ‘remote’ people in Africa; but now that pool was greatly expanded. Postcards, magazines, books by big-game hunters, illustrated travel stories, all ensnared Westerners in Africa’s remit, and all did so in the metropolitan living-room and study.

This essay may also be read in the privacy of one’s home. In it I attempt to locate the depiction of bush- men within a reasonably broad survey of this pictorial and consumer web. My central problematic is that bushmen, as they began to be viewed in photographs, changed their image among Europeans. They moved from appearing bestial and depraved, to become gentle, “harmless people” (Thomas 1959).3 I wish to show that an important well-spring for the shift was the connection between photography and naturalists’ valorisation of wild animals. I try to trace the shift mainly in two overlapping genres and the pictures in them: the twentieth century African travelogue, and the narratives of white hunters.4 My argument is that the medium of photography helped to trap the image of bushmen in a discourse in which ‘natural’ animals and people both, were valued and worth preserving. Thenceforth bushmen stayed in a ‘natural’ aspect for the Western imagination—a position maintained, against all odds, even today.

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With Camera and Gun in Southern Africa: Inventing the Image of Bushmen,

c.1880 to 1935

Paul S. Landau

Visual literacy is not a luxury, but an essential ingredient of modern life, affecting every member of society. Photography should therefore be popularised as an art form, and should be placed higher on the agenda of the arts.

(ANC Draft of National Cultural Policy, October 1994)

T

“ Bushman executioner” , photographed on Major Prichard’ s visit to Ovamboland in 1915. SAN 7001

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